Okay some discussions and articles mentioned on other boards it has come to my attention that Mobil 1 and now Royal Purple synthetics are no longer 100% synthetic. I've heard this mentioned about Mobil 1 before but I'll explain the new reasoning. If you ask Mobil 1 they will still claim and defend that their oil is 100% synthetic, but if you ask them if they have Naphalene in their oil, they will state they do. Naphalene is hydrocracked petroleum, which ironically is what Mobil used as the basis of their lawsuit against Castrol when they sued them for claiming their synthetic is 100%. Mobil said since it contained Naphalene is in it they can't claim it's 100%. Since Mobil 1 lost the case, they started including it as well! Supposedly Royal Purple is using it as well. It looks like AmsOil and Redline are the only two true 100% synthetics left. I'll stick to AmsOil as it's the easiest to obtain out of those 2.

Just wanted to mention this as there has been some discussion of Mobil 1 on here lately.

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Andrew S.
2000 Dark Forest Green GTP/GTX
14.413@95.03
My Mod Page

2001 San Marino Red Acura 3.2 CL Type S
* No Mods Yet, though planned *

 

Thanks Vampyre, good info..

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This does beg a few questions....

1) What is Naphalene?
2) How much Naphalene is in the oil?
3) Has anyone done any studies to prove that companies that use Naphalene have a significant difference in performance, oil life, oil temp, etc etc etc?

[This message has been edited by GoldTypeS (edited 01-17-2001).]

 

Naphalene is what is called hydrocracked petroleum. Normally in the refining process of crude, they use catalysts to 'crack' the crude oil molecules. With hydrocracking, they use a hydrogen atom to complete this process. It makes the final product better with improved lubrication properties than catalytic cracked oils (conventional motor oils) but still do not come close to the protection and temp max and min of pute synthetic. Essentially, Naphalene is an improved conventional motor oil. I believe these porducts contain something in the area of 5%. Not a large amount, but your still paying the same for 95% synth as you were for 100%, but in the same regard, their costs of supplies has gone down as well since hydrocracked petroleum is cheaper to produce/obtain than synthetic oils. So you probably paying 10% oor more for 5% less benefit versus the same product without the HC petro. I don't think it is a big enough difference in the long run unless you run over the recommended change intervals. The problem with this is that most consumers do NOT know that they are no longer getting 100% synthetic.

For a comparison of the two refining methods/end products (refular versus hydrocracked) check this link:

http://www.boucherandjones.com/hydrocracking.htm



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Andrew S.
2000 Dark Forest Green GTP/GTX
14.413@95.03
My Mod Page

2001 San Marino Red Acura 3.2 CL Type S
* No Mods Yet, though planned *

 

AHG! I should spell check my posts or type a little slower next time. Just realized how many little mistakes I have in that last post!

 

Vampyre, What weight of AMS oil are you using? Are you using their filter? If so which one and what part number. This is the oil I am going to use. I have not had to change my oil yet. How soon did you change over to the AMS? Do you change it yourself? Have you changed out your automatic transmision for AMS yet?



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2001 Acura CL-S

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Can you point us to substantiating articles. Not being a chemist, I looked around the web, and ended up at a few sites. On the Mobil UK page they show the oil being derived from "ethylene" into "synthetics" and "additives". They show themselves deriving the oil from the presumed lightest fractions of the "cracking" process.

1. Are they now going to the "bottom" of the oil chain, and adulterating the product?

2. Does the addition (if true) of this product alter its effectiveness?

3. Can you point me and others to the relevant urls?

4. This is similar to #3 -- do you have the info/links on the Mobil vs. Castrol law suit?

I have been using Mobil 1 for many years (not in CL-S yet). I also like the Redline products. I'm sure that some more info would be very useful.

Thanks in advance...


Here is the link to the "Mbbil One" graphic:

http://www.mobil.com/maff/world/uk/a...ive/index.html

I'm going to leave them (Mobil oil) a request (on their US site) for more info on their oil!

 

Hmmm...

I was very concerned. So I called the Mobil people *and* they insist that they do not add Naphalene to the product. I will leave a link to the page with 800 phone number. If you are right and they are wrong, so be it. But I asked them if and why they added the Naphalene to the product and the engineer said they did no such thing. (He said it, I didn't)

Here is the page link and phone number:


http://dallnd6.dal.mobil.com/GIS/Mob...7?OpenDocument

Check out the phone number at the bottom of the page:

1-800-662-4525

I selected option #3

There is also a toxicology report available (on some products). Perhaps that would be the smoking gun... Heck, I don't know.

 

Nice job Eric.

I'm actually confused myself now, since I started looking into this myself when someone from the GP board contacted Mobil and when he asked about the synthetic they said it was 100% synth, but when he asked if they add naphalene, they said yes, up to 5%. I'll mention your results over there and see what he says. This is getting interesting.

About the lawsuit:

The suit (complaint actually) was made with the National Advertising Division (part of BBB), this is a short description of the findings:

http://www.caru.org/nad99/0401.asp

I did find this great article on the whole deal and it also contains great info on Synthetics:

http://www.pecuniary.com/newsletters...csdefined.html

Though what hit me (and makes me doubt that eng. you talked to now is this excerpt:

'NAD noted that Mobil markets hydroisomerized basestocks as synthetic in Europe and elsewhere.'

If they do it everywhere else, don't you think they'd do it here? Why do you think NAD ruled in favor of Castrol on that point? If Mobil can do it, why wouldn't Castrol be able to?



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Andrew S.
2000 Dark Forest Green GTP/GTX
14.413@95.03
My Mod Page

2001 San Marino Red Acura 3.2 CL Type S
* No Mods Yet, though planned *